Sunday, 27 December 2015

With every passing month, Jeremy Corbyn’s position at the
top of the Labour Party is becoming further entrenched. His minders promise a
purge of dissenters early in 2016 and they propose ‘consultations’ on policy
which will not just be restricted to long-standing members, but will also involve
anyone who has paid a few quid and signed up on a whim to support Corbyn’s
far-left platform.

Many of these newbies follow their leader with a religious
fervour and are impervious to rational argument. They openly dismiss the
concrete polling evidence that shows JC’s elevation to be an unmitigated
disaster. I even had a discussion with one fan recently in which he seriously
argued I should ignore the polls and look instead at how quickly Corbyn
merchandise was selling online.

There are many Labour moderates who caution against
precipitous action. Why mount a coup d’état which is more than likely to fail? Wouldn’t it be better to bide our time and let
the Corbynistas see the error of their ways? Perhaps we should wait until defeat
in 2020? At that stage, it will be obvious to everybody what a tragic mistake
was made in the autumn of 2015.

It’s a beguiling argument, but one that is riddled with
holes.

First of all, untold damage will be done to the Labour
Party’s reputation over the next few years if Corbyn remains in charge. We have
the forthcoming referendum on membership of the EU, the ongoing debate about
how best to take the fight to IS and the whole climate of retrenchment and cuts
in the public sector under Cameron and Osborne. Labour needs to have something
serious to say on these issues and a leader credible enough to deliver the
message.

Second, the defeat when it comes in 2020 will be of
catastrophic proportions. I feel its extent is underestimated today, even by
those who have no time for Corbyn and his sidekick John McDonnell. Looking at the current polling data (which is
probably artificially boosting Labour numbers), I think it quite likely that
the party will fall below the 25% barrier. If that happens, the prospects will
already be fairly bleak for 2025, regardless of who takes over the leadership.

Third, the narrative from the Corbyn left will be one of betrayal. Labour’s failure will not have anything to do
with their beloved guru, but will have been the result of the fiendish attacks
of the capitalist press and the treacherous behaviour of ‘red Tories’ within
the party. Our Jez was never given a
proper chance, they will bleat disingenuously.

So we can play the waiting game and find that we have enveloped
ourselves in blanket of delusion. Every month that Corbyn remains unchallenged
is a month in which he remodels the party to support his own interests and
consolidate his power base. The danger is that we look back on the early months
of 2016 and realise we missed a vital opportunity. Perhaps our only
opportunity.

One interesting option might be for the PLP to elect its own
leader, signalling its independence from the grip of the party machine. The Corbynistas would shriek in outrage, but
would have few levers to pull. Although they may still command a majority among
the members and pseudo-members, the reality is that the frontline political
message of the Labour Party is carried to the media and the public by parliamentarians.

An alternative is a strategy of non-cooperation with the
leadership. This means a mass resignation of all moderate forces in the current
shadow cabinet and from junior shadow ministerial appointments. While Corbyn might well be able to pick off individuals
such as Angela Eagle and Hilary Benn, he would be seriously challenged to find
credible people to fill a whole load of empty seats.

A likely criticism of these suggestions is they lack a real
game plan. What is supposed to happen as a result of any action taken by the
PLP? Is Corbyn meant to cave in and
call it a day? It seems highly unlikely. And even if he did, would he not simply put
himself up for re-election again? While
some members will no doubt regret their decision to back him in the summer, the
likelihood is that he could once again carry a majority.

I don’t disagree with any of this. If it did come to another
leadership election, there would need to be a strong, impressive candidate to
take Corbyn on. Someone who attacked his extremist policy positions from the
outset and who had the credibility the erstwhile contenders lacked. A figure such as Alan
Johnson perhaps. Or Tom Watson, the man who managed to achieve his own mandate
as the party’s deputy leader. But I
fully accept that this seems a little pie in the sky.

Ultimately, the challenge must happen anyway, regardless of the prospects of success. Why? Because Labour is a
party with a proud history, dating from the very start of the twentieth
century. It was created to represent the interests of ordinary working people
who wanted a better life, not the ideological agenda of activists. Never has
the disconnect between the membership and ordinary Labour voters been so
catastrophically large. So our fight is
for the people who rely on the Labour
Party rather than the people who comprise its membership.

If the confrontation with Corbyn fails, we walk away. There
is a new party and a fresh start. But at least the process of recovery and
renaissance can begin. Delay may prove deadly.

Friday, 27 November 2015

Amid the turmoil in the Labour Party, it seems rather
appropriate that this year’s John Lewis Christmas commercial features a
confused old man who lives on another planet. If you’ve seen the ad, you’ll
know that the gentleman in question is rather out of touch with what’s happening
on Earth, although he still hopes to retain some kind of connection with the
people who inhabit the place.

On the TV, there’s a happy ending. For Jeremy Corbyn,
there most certainly won’t be. The issue is not so much what happens to the MP
for Islington North and his sidekick, Chairman Mao. They are destined for
political oblivion – perhaps sooner than many people originally imagined. The real
question is whether they will manage to destroy the Labour Party in the
meantime.

There will undoubtedly be some kind of attempt at a coup
in 2016. Some MPs are already opening calling for Corbyn’s resignation just two
months after he was elected, so the pressure is only going to become more and
more intense. But there’s a big obstacle, as we all know. The Labour electoral
system was rightly changed to give members the ultimate say over the
leadership.

So, we have a conundrum. MPs can force a contest, but
Jeremy will probably win again. Why? Because the membership is hopelessly and
catastrophically divorced from the interests, aspirations and political views
of the wider electorate. Common sense is off the agenda because of a combination
of long-term ‘sleepers’ (left-wingers who kept their heads down during the
Blair and Brown era) and an influx of new people who’ve spent the past 10 years
slagging the Labour Party off.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a lot of
confusion in terms of data and organisation. I ended up unable to vote in the
summer, despite having been a member of the party since the 1980s. Some people
receive emails requesting their views on Syria and others don’t. I’m not
suggesting this division is a reflection of political manipulation. It is,
however, a sign that plebiscites and informal surveys have little validity. Are
you a three-quid member or a proper member or just someone who signed up to
something or other online? Everything is a blur.

While some MPs have been talking to lawyers about the
possibility of excluding Jez from any re-run ballot, this would be a perilous
route and would rightly lead to accusations that the contest was undemocratic.

Another option is that Corbyn is paid a visit by the men
in grey suits. Perhaps the boilersuited men of the trade unions. They have a
conversation in which they tell him the game is up. Although they backed him
because of his strong stance against austerity and in favour of trade union
rights, they could tell him that his sheer incompetence and lack of popularity
is proving a disaster for their members.

I do think it’s conceivable there’s a scenario in which
Corbyn throws in the towel. But the pressure will have to be relentless and the
ultimatum very direct.

But if the Labour Party can’t be rescued from itself, there’s
only one other option left. A new party must inevitably be formed.

Of course, there is a reluctance to countenance the idea
right now, because our first-past-the-post electoral system argues strongly
against it. In reality though, the
schism needn’t necessarily prove catastrophic in the long term. It is arguable that
the formation of the SDP in 1981 exposed the lack of support for Michael Foot’s
left-wing agenda and led to a reformist era under Neil Kinnock. Ultimately, it
paved the way for Labour to become electable once again.

Let’s imagine a situation in which Jeremy Corbyn remains
leader of something which is notionally called The Labour Party. A shell of its
historic former self, it pursues the 1980s leftist agenda beloved of Corbyn and
his friends Ken Livingstone, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell et al. If left to its
own devices, I would see a party of this type perhaps attracting 20% of the
popular vote in a general election.

Meanwhile, a mainstream social democratic alternative under
the leadership of, say, Chuka Umunna or David Miliband starts to provide a
credible and coherent alternative. It speaks up effectively against the
ideological agenda of the Tory government, but sounds credible on security, the
economy and welfare.

In 2020, I have no doubt that such a split in the Labour
Party would lead to a Conservative victory under the current electoral system.
But sadly, we have to recognise that a Conservative victory is coming anyway. The
question is how the left successfully rebuilds in time for 2025.

The formation of the new party would leave Corbyn
vulnerable and ideologically exposed. He’d be left with the name ‘Labour’, but
it would now be a label associated only with the Bennite tradition he
represents.

It’s difficult to know for certain how events will
unfold. But it’s certainly worth getting our telescopes out and looking beyond
the next general election.

Monday, 14 September 2015

All the calls for unity after Corbyn’s election victory are
completely understandable. It is a truism that divided parties can’t win
elections. The trouble is that united
parties with the wrong policies and the wrong leader can’t win elections
either.

Unity under Corbyn is a complete charade, particularly
within the Parliamentary Labour Party. While the Labour church is notoriously
broad, it’s difficult to imagine Presbyterian elders being particularly happy
when told the new members of the congregation have chosen to follow the Pope.
Pull together, they’re told. We’re all Christians, after all.

Here’s a controversial thought. Might it be that disunity and division are exactly what Labour needs right now?

Let’s cast our minds back to the early 1980s. The left, with
its figurehead of Tony Benn, was in the ascendancy in the Labour Party. A
conference in January 1981 endorsed the policies of withdrawal from the
European Economic Community and unilateral nuclear disarmament. By the end of
March, a new party – the SDP – was founded by Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley
Williams and Bill Rodgers. In 1983, as part of an alliance with the Liberals,
they received 25% of the vote - just three points fewer than Labour under the
leadership of Michael Foot.

Of course, the first-past-the-post system wasn’t kind to the
SDP-Liberal Alliance in terms of seats in Parliament, but they had made their
mark. The break from the old model of politics had very clearly
demonstrated the limits of left-wing
Labour’s appeal in a system when people had a proper choice. 70% of the
electorate opted for political platforms to the right of those advocated by the
Party under Foot.

The result of this was the election of Neil Kinnock and a
process of modernisation and reform throughout the remainder of the 1980s. It
was a long, arduous struggle, as Kinnock had to fight on two fronts. As well as
dealing with the new left politics represented by the likes of Corbyn and other
Campaign Group MPs, he also had to confront systematic and organised
infiltration by Trotskyists.

Kinnock made gradual, incremental change. Although he was
never destined to be Prime Minister, the Labour Party owes him a huge debt.
While he knew that unity was important, he also realised that there are some
important prerequisites for that unity.
What’s more, he understood the compromises that had to be made in order
to win the trust of the electorate.

So let’s consider two different scenarios in 2015.

In the first, sullen and resentful Labour MPs sit timidly on
the backbenches while Corbyn, the confrontational McDonnell and the completely
discredited Burnham pursue an agenda that will lead the Party into electoral
oblivion. Seeing Chris Bryant, the MP
for Rhondda, claim on camera a couple of days ago that he could actually
imagine Corbyn winning a general election was one of the most embarrassing
pieces of TV I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s amazing how one ludicrously mismanaged
election process has managed to rob people of their common sense and sense of irony.

Maybe the centre-ground Labour MPs believe they’ll be able
to take pot shots once in a while. But
if they do choose to stick their heads above the parapet at any point, they
stand the risk of being deselected by an ever-increasing army of activists and
leftists drawn to the Party. (It’s as if the location of a permanent illegal
rave has been announced on Facebook. The headbangers will keep on arriving for
the next few months, I expect.)

A second scenario is that a handful of brave Parliamentarians
forge a new identity and stand up to the Corbynistas. Clearly the core group
should include those who have refused to serve in his Shadow Cabinet. There should be a clear and unequivocal
statement of intent: that Labour must remain a party in the political
mainstream, committed to Europe, NATO and economic credibility. Now is the time
to face down Corbyn and explain that the real Labour Party is rooted in the
communities that elect its councillors and MPs, rather than in a self-selected
base of leftist activists.

One thing is absolutely certain. The attack on Corbyn must
be substantive. Far too much of the
commentary about him so far has been about his unelectability. While it’s evident that it would take an
extraordinary set of circumstances to see him make it to Downing Street –
probably a complete implosion of the Tory Party over Europe and a full-blown
economic crisis of the scale of 2008 – we must defeat him intellectually. As Tony Blair made clear, even if Corbynism
were electorally popular, we wouldn’t support it.

Yvette Cooper, to her credit, made an impressive effort at
the end of the leadership contest to explain why Corbyn’s economic policies are
so misguided. Quantitative easing is a
desperate measure reserved for times of extreme peril, not a policy that can be
used when an economy is growing. The costs of renationalising the rail and
energy sectors would be crippling, unless we failed to compensate shareholders.
And if that happened, the stock market collapse that would follow would put in
danger the pensions of the very people Labour tries to represent.

So we must tackle him over the economy, confront him over
defence and point out just how out of touch he is with the electorate. What
does he really think about EU membership? How is he going to protect us from
the terrorist and state threats that menace us around the world?

If we receive no satisfactory response, then the time will
have arrived to go our separate ways. In the short-term, Labour will be
weakened. But in the long-term, it’s only a vocal challenge from the mainstream
left that will pull the Party back once more from the brink.

Sunday, 23 August 2015

As Labour approaches a landmark in its 100-year history with the prospect of veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn winning the forthcoming leadership election, it's time to examine and explode some of the myths that have grown up around his campaign.

MYTH ONE: CORBYN
REPRESENTS SOMETHING NEW

To anyone under 30, it must probably seem as if Corbyn is
saying something new and radical. After all, his particular brand of leftist
rhetoric died a death with Labour’s fourth consecutive election defeat in
1992. If you’re from the ‘millennial’
generation, it may seem as if Corbyn has emerged from nowhere in puff of smoke,
a little like the anti-austerity movement Podemos in Spain. But those of us
involved actively in British politics back in the 1980s can confirm that Corbyn
was saying all the same things back then. He’s a 45rpm vinyl single, stuck in a
groove. As John Rentoul elegantly put it
in a recent article, the Islington North MP has been ‘consistent to a fault in
his career’, which is ‘one of the worst things about him’.

MYTH TWO: CORBYN’S
BIG RALLIES MEAN HE’S POPULAR

There is a natural constituency in the UK for people who
embrace radical politics. Corbyn’s rallies attract young activists, people
involved in campaigns and pressure groups, trade unionists and old-school
Labour Party ‘sleepers’ who felt excluded in the Blair and Brown era. I wouldn’t
be surprised if folk with these kind of overtly left-wing sympathies amount to
between 15 and 20% of the total population. It is therefore quite possible to
have big, energised rallies that say absolutely nothing about the likelihood of
Labour winning a general election. Michael Foot notoriously believed he was
doing well in 1983 as minders ushered him from one adoring meeting to another.

MYTH THREE: CORBYN IS
PARTICULARLY POPULAR WITH YOUNG PEOPLE

Unsurprisingly, there will always be young people attracted
to radical left-wing politics. I can say this with confidence, as I was one of
those people who would have given Jeremy Corbyn a hearing myself as a teenager in
the middle of the 1980s. Is there some kind of particular upsurge of support
right now which represents something new or unusual? When we see young people
at his rallies, it’s legitimate and
logical to conclude that he does indeed have young supporters. This is rather
different from saying that young people
as a whole support Corbyn. If aliens
landed in Oxford Street, they might assume that every road in the UK was full
of shops and red London buses. But they’d be wrong.

MYTH FOUR: CORBYN HAS
ATTRACTED VALUABLE NEW SUPPORTERS TO THE LABOUR PARTY

It seems clear that the large numbers of people signing up
to participate in the leadership contest are doing so specifically to vote for
Corbyn. In order to be allowed entry,
they have to declare that they are loyal supporters of the Labour Party. Funny,
isn’t it, how their loyalty never drove them to make any commitment in the
past. Some may well be Tories and Trotskyists, although this is actually not
the real issue. More than likely, many of them are people who have spent the
past ten years or so badmouthing the Labour Party and denouncing Tony Blair.
They are activists, campaigners and former members who wouldn’t have anything
to do with Labour in recent years until they saw a chance to sway a critical
vote. The idea of the open primary was
actually to attract ordinary members of the public, rather than make ourselves
vulnerable to deliberate entryism in favour of specific candidate. The process
is completely open to legal challenge.

MYTH FIVE: CORBYN
WILL WIN BACK SCOTLAND

Only 4.7% of the UK population voted for the SNP, but the
first-past-the-post system has given them a huge landslide in seats north of
the border in May. Even if we won back these seats, Labour would still need to
win the critical Tory-held marginals in England to form a government. And there
is no guarantee whatsoever that Corbyn’s left-wing rhetoric will do the trick
anyway. While some SNP voters were undoubtedly swayed by party’s vocal stand
against austerity, others were simply expressing their support for nationalism
in the wake of the referendum or were protesting against politics as usual. It’s
not entirely clear why they would revert to voting Labour because of Corbyn’s
election.

MYTH SIX: CORBYN’S
ECONOMIC POLICIES ARE COMMON SENSE

There is a legitimate intellectual case against the politics
of ‘austerity’ pursued by the Conservative government, which is why many
respectable economists are prepared to endorse an end to the programme. But as
Yvette Cooper has pointed out, Corbyn’s money-printing ‘quantitative easing’
strategy is certainly not what Keynes would recommend as an economy grew. The
costs of renationalisation of the railways and energy companies would be astronomical
unless the intention is to offer no compensation to shareholders. And when it
comes to industrial policy, Corbyn has proposed the outlandish idea that we
might start re-opening coal mines. He is stuck thirty or forty years in the
past and would come into immediate conflict with the reality of modern
globalised markets.

MYTH SEVEN: CORBYN HAS A FUTURE AS LABOUR LEADER

Although there is much talk of unity and pulling together
whatever the result, Labour simply cannot carry on with Corbyn as leader and be
a credible party of government. First of all, there might well be a legal challenge to
the result. If he survived this, then some MPs talk about giving him a year or
two, rather than challenging him straight away. Really? A year in which we
debate military action in Syria against ISIS? A year in which the campaign on
the EU referendum takes place? A year in which the immigration crisis in Europe
comes to a head? Even people who admire Corbyn’s stand against austerity know
that he would be incapable of offering any credible leadership in these key
areas of European and foreign policy. My prediction is that there will have to
be a quick challenge or there will be a schism at least on the scale of the
1981 SDP defections.

Saturday, 18 July 2015

This is officially a summer of madness. It may well be
remembered as the period in which the Labour Party buried any chance of even
remaining a credible opposition, let alone a future party of government.

After the defeat in May, there was an opportunity for some
real soul-searching. Instead, we were plunged straight into a leadership
contest. To the delight of many, Chuka Umunna – the highly credible MP for
Streatham – announced he would stand. Within three days, however, he’d
withdrawn from the race, citing undue levels of media intrusion on his family.

This was the moment the madness first set in. The obvious
candidate was gone and we were left with a field few can genuinely claim to
find very inspiring.

Andy Burnham, the dapper former Health Secretary, who plays
on his Liverpudlian roots rather than his education at Fitzwilliam College,
Cambridge, seems to swing left and right according to the prevailing wind.

His most revealing admission during the campaign came during
a speech in Dublin, in which he claimed that the 2015 Labour manifesto was the
best of those he’d seen in the four elections he’d contested. Bafflingly crazy.
The manifesto which sent Labour to its most disastrous defeat in a generation was
better than the ones that had helped
Blair to win in 2001 and 2005? You couldn’t make it up.

Yvette Cooper hasn’t committed any serious faux pas, as far
as I can tell. But her close personal and political associations with Ed Balls,
Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown are the very last thing that Labour needs. Hers is the steady-as-she-goes,
one-more-heave, don’t-rock-the-boat campaign. But the boat has already been
severely rocked and is taking in alarming quantities of water.

Liz Kendall is the candidate I most admire. She’s asking
difficult questions and providing answers that challenge many long-standing
shibboleths of the Labour Party. For her bravery, she’s denounced on social
media as a ‘Tory’ and seems, unfortunately, to making little headway.

And then there’s Jeremy Corbyn. He’s only in the contest
because of another moment of madness. At the very last minute, when the call
for candidates was about to close, some Labour MPs chose to ‘lend’ their
nominations to the veteran left-winger in the misguided belief that his voice
needed to be heard. David Lammy and Sadiq Khan – both of whom claim to be
serious candidates for London Mayor – were just two examples of lawmakers who
exhibited an incredible naivety.

By this point, acting Labour Leader Harriet Harman had already
extended the franchise to pretty much Uncle Tom Cobley and all. Individual
union members. The general public. Any Tory who can afford £3 and make a
convincing case that they are voting in the best interests of Labour. The
result? A dog’s dinner of a contest in which pretty much anything could happen.

Where will the madness lead us? There are two particularly
frightening scenarios.

The first – and most likely – is that Andy Burnham wins, but
that Jeremy Corbyn runs him a close second. Burnham will then be under immediate
pressure from the left, while the Tories will be in their element. They will
relentlessly use Corbyn’s level of support as a stick with which to beat the
Labour Party. ‘While you claim to be moderate,’ they will say, ‘just look at
how the votes piled up for an old-style 80s socialist.’

The second possibility is one which even a few weeks ago no
one took remotely seriously. What if Corbyn actually won? What if Britain’s answer to Alexis Tsiprias and Yanis
Varoufakis (minus the good looks, academic qualifications and fashion sense),
actually clawed his way to the top?

People are discussing this dystopian vision of Labour’s
future sotto voce and there are some
rather spurious polls which suggest that he may be ahead by quite a margin.

The repercussions would be immense and immediate.

There is no question in my mind that there would be a schism
on a scale not seen since the breakaway by the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ in 1981
to form the SDP. Parliamentarians and ordinary members would leave Labour in
droves to form an alternative power base. Corbyn would find himself in charge
of some kind of Socialist Truth Society, which would draw in disillusioned
leftists, former Green voters, Trotskyists and all kinds of flotsam and jetsam.

My feeling is that this rump Labour Party could command
maybe 20% of the national vote and would be strong enough under
first-past-the-post to have a reasonable representation in Parliament. But it
would never be a party that would form a government. The alternative party of
the centre-left, which we could perhaps imagine being led by a mainstream
Labour politician, would possibly manage 15 or 20% of the vote itself –
appealing to a base of progressive, aspirational voters in the Midlands, London
and the South East.

You don’t need a PhD in psephology to realise that this set
of circumstances would be an unmitigated disaster and a recipe for near
permanent Tory government. It would be history repeating itself in the craziest
of ways. As if we’d learnt nothing from the experiences of the 1980s. We’d
probably even have the spectacle of the newly-formed breakaway party reaching
out to the Liberal Democrats, with a view to forming some kind of alliance.

But the madness doesn’t end there. We have the referendum on
membership of the European Union coming up within the next couple of years. In
the past couple of weeks, there has been a growing sentiment on the left – from
commentators such as George Monbiot and Owen Jones through to union baron Len
McCluskey – that progressives should vote against staying in the EU.

This is truly the world turned upside down. Vote against the
EU? We’re talking about an institution which, for all its faults, has reinforced
workplace protection, imposed higher environment standards, protected consumers
and acted as a champion of human rights. We would vote against being a part of
this multinational institution at a time when all the most pressing issues we
face – on the financial sector, the environment and terrorism – are only ones
that we can tackle internationally?

So what exactly is going on during this insane summer
season? As the Mad Hatter asked Alice, ‘have
you guessed the riddle yet?’

Saturday, 9 May 2015

After the catastrophic defeat in the 2015 General Election,
Labour will inevitably go through a long period of soul searching. Here are my first five thoughts on the lessons the Party needs to learn:

1.THE GROUND WAR ISN’T EVERYTHING

We’ve heard for many years from organisers
and some academics about the importance of the so-called ‘ground war’. According
to their argument, it's flooding areas with activists that wins elections. Unfortunately,
if the ‘air war’ is badly conducted, your ground offensive is unlikely to succeed.
Labour failed to win key seats in which it had a strong presence.

2.YOU NEED A STORY TO WIN

In the jargon of political pundits, Labour
needs a ‘narrative’. The Tories had one about the supposed success of their
economic plan and how this would be put at risk by an alliance of Miliband and
Sturgeon. Labour’s weak response was to say it had a ‘better plan’. They were framing
the Labour message in the light of the Tory one.

3.IT’S IMPORTANT TO ACCEPT PEOPLE AS THEY ARE

Alan Johnson has been talking about how
Blair understood people’s aspirations. Nick Cohen has made the interesting –
and allied point – that too many Labour people tend to look down its nose at
the English, resenting their prejudices and ignorance. It doesn’t play well. In
politics, you need to work with people rather than against them.

4.LISTEN TO THE FOCUS GROUPS

The pink bus and stone plinth would never
have survived any kind of consumer testing. There can only be two conclusions:
no one bothered to ask a selection of voters what they thought of the ideas, or
– worse still – the voters were asked, but Labour ignored what they said.

5.YOU CAN’T TELL PEOPLE THEY’RE WRONG

Some people point to the moment in the
debates when Ed Miliband told the audience that Labour hadn’t spent too much in
their previous administration. It was a claim met with derision. If you want to
challenge people’s perceptions and convert them to an objective truth, the
process takes years. You can’t change their minds in the heat of a campaign or simply tell them they don’t understand.

Friday, 8 May 2015

Yesterday, a rather desperate canvasser came knocking on
my door in the outskirts of London. My Labour poster had obviously not done
enough to deter this beleaguered emissary of the former Business Secretary,
Vince Cable. In fact, it seems that showing my colours may actually have acted
as something of a magnet to the Lib Dems. Just a day or two before, I’d had a
leaflet spinning the rather unlikely story that The Daily Mirror was advising
me to vote for Cable. I’d also had a letter from the Cabinet Minister telling
me how much he understood my desire to get rid of the Tories.

Today, Labour and Green supporters in this leafy suburban
constituency may be wondering if they did the right thing. They’ll see that Dr
Tania Matthias – a GP in the NHS, who must surely need treatment for the
cognitive dissonance associated with supporting the Conservatives – has swept
Dr Cable aside.

As we pick up the pieces the morning after the night
before, it’s quite natural to ask whether we perhaps should have voted
tactically and saved Cable’s skin. My answer is a categorical no.

I’ve always been impressed with my dealings with the guy
at a personal level. He is incredibly bright and has a razor-sharp memory for
detail. On a couple of occasions, he stepped in to help with quite difficult
issues and made representations on our behalf. I couldn’t fault his work as a
constituency MP.

At the 2010 election, however, he told Labour voters to
support him to keep the Tories out in Twickenham – a call echoed by his
colleagues in other local seats such as Kingston & Surbiton and Sutton
& Cheam. Many natural Labour supporters gritted their teeth and did what
they were told. Cable then jumped into the bed with the very Tories he had
denounced.

Five years go by. Five years in which the use of food
banks has increased hugely, while the public has been fed a dubious diet of
austerity. And then Cable has the nerve – the barefaced and unashamed cheek –
to come back to me and say I should vote for him because he’s the only man who
can beat the Tories.

I may be desperate, but I’m not signing up to join the
cast of the Muppets. Cable is a bright man, but he insults the intelligence of
his constituents with his opportunism and lack of principle. The Liberal
Democrats have been utterly decimated in the 2015 general election, but they
have only themselves to blame.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Living in what the Tories consider to be a marginal constituency is a bit of a nightmare. I am bombarded with propaganda from their candidate Tania Mathias, who insists on using her title 'Dr' in all communications - probably because her rival, Vince Cable, has a PhD in economics. (I'll hang on to the leaflet, just in case I'm ever forced to change my family GP and need to draw up a list of local practices to avoid.)

The rhetoric is now becoming more and more strident. Let's just dissect this wonderful paragraph which sits under a picture of the Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg.

"This year's General Election is not like last time - polls are showing the Lib Dems are set to lose many of their seats, which means this time you can't vote Lib Dem in Twickenham and expect to get David Cameron as Prime Minister. You'll risk getting the chaos of Ed Miliband propped up by the SNP - with Alex Salmond calling the shots."

Forget for a moment that Miliband has categorically ruled out any deals with the SNP and certainly will have nothing to do with any formal coalition. Look at the first, rather unwieldy, sentence. I love the implication that last time around, people might have been voting for Vince Cable expecting to get David Cameron. In fact, they voted for Cable because he claimed that he was against Cameron! It's hard to imagine that any of his supporters anticipated the veteran MP would jump so readily into bed with the Tories.

Of course, what the Conservatives actually mean here is that this time around, people might think they can vote for Vince Cable and keep David Cameron at No 10. Dr Tania fears a groundswell of opinion that says that Cable is a good constituency MP (which he is) and that we can hang on to him, while keeping the Bullingdon Club boys in charge nationally. To me her message smacks of desperation, but perhaps it strikes some kind of chord in mansions on Richmond Hill.

One of the funniest aspects of both the Lib Dem and Tory election leaflets is the deliberate attempt to anonymise the rival candidate. The headline above the picture here reads: "Don't risk Britain's future by voting for Nick Clegg's candidate." Would that be the unknown, untested Lib Dem novice the party has decided to field? Or would it be the guy who is currently Business Secretary in the Doc's coalition government?

The Lib Dems, of course, do the same thing in reverse. They tell us that the choice is between Vince Cable and the Tory. No mention of Tania or her medical credentials.

Friday, 27 February 2015

The latest predictions from The Guardian for the outcome of the UK
general election will occupy the dreams of political scientists and the
nightmares of politicians. The figures speak of a constitutional crisis. A
stalemate in which a most unlikely coalition would need to be formed in order
to produce a majority government.

If these numbers were
reflected in the poll on May 7th, the only mathematically plausible
option is for Labour, the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to forge a three-way
alliance.

The disgraced former minister
Chris Huhne rightly points out that the fixed-term parliaments may tend to
favour coalition rather than minority government. But that presupposes there
really is a workable coalition. I see this ScotLibLab pact as being something
that might possibly be agreed on paper out of desperation, but which would be
inherently unstable from hour one. Trident, tuition fees, the history of recent
animosity. It’s a recipe for absolute chaos.

Of course, it’s the SNP who
have put the marauding, predatory cat among the puffed-up pigeons of the London
establishment. Who would have thought that a referendum which the nationalists
lost would subsequently give them the whip hand at Westminster? But in The
Guardian’s poll, it is they who will prevent Labour from having the automatic
claim to form a government and make a mockery of the complacency too many in
the Labour hierarchy had about the benefits of the electoral system.

The position of all the party
leaders is extremely precarious. If Cameron fails to win an overall majority
for the Tories, I really think he is history. There are too many right-wingers
who see his coalition government as weak-willed and unnecessary. They have been
biting their tongues to a certain extent, but will sink their teeth elsewhere
after the election.

The Labour Party will be
kinder to Miliband, but only if he succeeds in making Labour the largest force
in Parliament. Unfortunately, thanks to the SNP, The Guardian predicts that he
won’t even manage that. He will survive only as long as he is a credible
contender for Prime Minister.

Nick Clegg might cling on to
his tightly-fought seat of Sheffield Hallam, although there are people who
understandably pray for a student revolution and a ‘Portillo moment’.

If we imagine he survives, he’ll
have more MPs than some people suppose. That’s because the Lib Dems (despite
their long-standing support for electoral reform) have played the
first-past-the-post system very well and have entrenched their vote in some key
constituencies. In my own area, I imagine that Vince Cable will survive, for
example, even though the Tories control the local council and are hopeful of
ousting him.

But Clegg will be a busted
flush. The Lib Dems will know he’s poison when it comes to any negotiations
with Labour and the SNP, so a third coup d’état is surely in the offing.

Of course, there is a lot of
water to flow under Westminster Bridge. Slight fluctuations in the percentage
figures could shift the arithmetical balance. All it might take is a relatively
small thing that moves the polls by a couple of points. A particularly strong
or weak performance in the election debates, for instance, assuming they go
ahead. Or a policy initiative that has some genuine stand-out value.

Peter Kellner of YouGov said
today that he feels the Labour pledge to cut tuition fees to £6,000 could
potentially swing the vote Miliband’s way in nine constituencies. Under normal
circumstances, this might be hardly worth the effort. But in 2015, who knows?

Miliband did well, I thought,
on the latest cash-for-access scandal. Despite former Jack Straw’s involvement
alongside Malcolm Rifkind, the Labour leader managed to turn it into a
here-and-now question: do we stop outside interests or don’t we? As a result,
Cameron was left bleating unconvincingly about people running family businesses
and looking hopelessly out of touch with the public mood.

Will issues of parliamentary
probity make a difference? Or do the electors already think ‘a plague on all
your houses’? The attack on tax avoidance didn’t seem to land a killer punch.

My feeling is that in the
final weeks of the campaign, each of the two major party leaders will be
looking for that tiny piece of good fortune that will make a difference of 10
or 15 or 20 seats. If it proves elusive, Labour and the Tories will retreat
into their well-established comfort zones of the NHS and the economy
respectively. May 7th will roll around and we’ll be in for a very
rocky ride.